diff --git a/R/mergingandstackingutilities.R b/R/mergingandstackingutilities.R
index 57a78bc..77de2f3 100644
--- a/R/mergingandstackingutilities.R
+++ b/R/mergingandstackingutilities.R
@@ -521,6 +521,7 @@ makeValidNameForSpss <- function(input.name, existing.names, delimiter = "")
 {
     input.name |>
         removeWhitespace() |>
+        removeInvalidCharacters() |>
         removeInvalidStartingCharacters() |>
         truncateNameToByteLimit() |>
         trimTrailingPeriods() |>
@@ -534,6 +535,19 @@ removeWhitespace <- function(name)
     gsub("\\s+", "", name)
 }
 
+removeInvalidCharacters <- function(name)
+{
+    # The regex matches all characters except:
+    #   \\pL = any kind of letter from any language
+    #   Numeric characters 0-9
+    #   \\p{Sc} = any kind of currency symbol
+    #   The special characters \ . _ $ # @
+    #
+    # This is stricter than either haven or Displayr, because their set of allowed characters are different.
+    # See unit tests for removeInvalidCharacters
+    gsub("[^\\pL0-9\\p{Sc}\\\\._$#@]", "", name, perl = TRUE)
+}
+
 removeInvalidStartingCharacters <- function(name)
 {
     gsub("^[^a-zA-Z@]+", "", name)
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-mergingandstackingutilities.R b/tests/testthat/test-mergingandstackingutilities.R
index cea2ae7..c7e3335 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-mergingandstackingutilities.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-mergingandstackingutilities.R
@@ -189,3 +189,16 @@ test_that("DS-4210: SPSS variable names sanitized before attempting to save", {
                       "VAR",
                       "VAR_1"))
 })
+
+test_that("removeInvalidCharacters", {
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters(intToUtf8(0:127)), "#$.0123456789@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ\\_abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz") # check characters in basic ASCII
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("ç"), "ç") # letter characters in extended ASCII are allowed
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("½"), "") # number characters in extended ASCII are removed (allowed by haven but not Displayr)
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("¥"), "¥") # currency characters in extended ASCII are allowed
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("…"), "") # punctuation characters in extended ASCII are removed (allowed by Displayr but not haven)
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("©"), "") # other characters in extended ASCII are removed (allowed by haven but not Displayr)
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("名称"), "名称") # "letter" unicode characters are allowed
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("∞"), "") # number characters in unicode are removed (allowed by haven but not Displayr)
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("€"), "€") # currency unicode characters are allowed
+    expect_equal(removeInvalidCharacters("¿"), "") # punctuation unicode characters are removed (not allowed by either)
+})